


fifteen minutes seven secrets

by Anonymous



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Age Difference, Doctor/Patient, Established Relationship, M/M, Mentions of Substance Abuse, Minor Novel References, Oral Sex, Sexual Fantasy, mentions of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-17 01:25:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13648521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Things happening in the doctor's office stay in the doc's office, etc.





	1. fifteen minutes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Harken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Harken/gifts).



> Uuh, hi there! I saw your letter requesting Marito/Yagarai back during Yule sign-ups and went yeaaah finally someone else out there who gets it!! I hoped to get matched up with you, but it didn't pan out. Coming back to check on the collection now, I realized no-one filled your request for them, so I couldn’t help myself. Think of it as a Valentine’s Day treat, I s’ppose! 
> 
> You didn’t really specify as to what you liked in terms of, uh, content, so I just rolled with personal bias. I ended up including a whole bit with Yuki, because I really like their dynamic also - I hope you don’t mind a comedic counterweight to whatever the first part turned out being ~~hell if I know~~. 
> 
> The first setting is partially based on [this sketch](https://ibb.co/hjb8Vn) by the official character designer.

“There you are. I thought as much. You know, you can’t just come in to nap here whenever you want, Lieutenant. This is an infirmary.”  
  
All he gets in response is pointed silence, and Yagarai leans against the doorframe with a sigh, taking in the sight of his one particular regular sprawled out on the examination couch before him. He has one arm thrown across his face to block out the golden afternoon sun filtering in through the half-closed blinds, casting stripes of shadows across the long stretch of his limbs, the width of his chest.   
  
If there’s one thing Yagarai has in abundance, it’s patience, and it pays off as usual. The seconds tick by, but eventually, Marito moves his arm ever so slightly out of the way, shooting him a quizzical glance. In this lighting, his eyes are the colour of molten brass, Yagarai thinks.  
  
“And here I thought it was better to at least sleep here where chances are none of the brats will drop by unannounced. Should I go to the hangar next time, then?”  
  
“A teacher shouldn’t be sleeping on school grounds, period,” Yagarai replies in the best class rep tone he can dredge up from memory, pushing off the doorway to make his way over to the subject of his lecture. “Let alone in a place reserved for medical emergencies. Lieutenant. It’s an on-principle kind of thing. You should be setting a good example.”  
  
“Why, aren’t you an inspiration to us all, sensei.” Marito peers up at him as he comes to a stand right next to the examination couch. Even as outwardly relaxed as he looks now, Yagarai can see the dark shadows below his eyes, the underlying tension in his shoulders. His smile gets the familiar sardonic edge as he continues: “Though I doubt there’s anything I could do at this point to salvage me being an all-around bad example. I guess there’s merit in becoming a cautionary tale instead.”  
  
“Lieutenant,” Yagarai chides with a frown, as if he could wipe away years of ingrained self-loathing with just a drop of disapproval. “Don’t.”  
  
“Apologies,” Marito says, cheerfully insincere, sitting up in a sudden motion. He’s tall enough to be still almost on eye-level with Yagarai, and he can feel his pulse pick up slightly at the sudden proximity, close enough that he can count the flecks of dark brown in Marito’s iris, but moving back is the furthest thing from his mind. “I’m an incorrigible man, I fear.”  
  
He leans in just a fraction more, his hands coming up to take hold of the lapels of Yagarai’s lab coat, tugging him closer. It’s like being drawn in by a magnet, and Yagarai feels his eyes slide shut as he lets himself be kissed.  
  
Marito tastes of the long familiar combination of caffeine and nicotine, with the barely detectible warm flavor of brandy lingering beneath, and Yagarai knows he should reprimand him for all three of these three vices.   
  
A good doctor would. A proper doctor would.  
  
He, instead, lets himself be anchored in place by the Lieutenant's hands, returning the kiss in kind, occasionally dragging his teeth over his bottom lip. The pleased hum he gets in return each time reverberates under the palm he has pressed against Marito’s chest, fingertips against the strong beat of his heart.  
  
When he pulls back slightly, he can feel the push against his hand that tells him Marito nearly rises to follow after him, even with the tiny amount of distance he put between them, but then he lets go and drops back against the couch with a sigh, eyes closed as if he intended to go back to sleep out of pure spite.  
  
“Someone could come in at any minute,” Yagarai points out.  
  
Marito doesn’t even bother to look at him, tone utterly matter-of-fact.  
  
“Liar. I heard you lock the door when you came in.”  
  
And yet there are still some on the base who truly think the Lieutenant a dense, unobservant person, Yagarai thinks, unable to stall the pleased smile from stealing onto his face. What pitiful fools, the lot of them.  
  
“Have I now,” he muses out loud, even as he already bends down, bracing himself on his hands planted to each side of Marito’s head.  
  
“You’re not going to successfully feign innocence to me, sensei. It’s a bit late for that, you know.”  
  
Marito opens his eyes and looks Yagarai over with something akin to amused fondness. Then, he reaches out to pull the glasses of Yagarai’s face with great care, folding them and putting them onto the roll tray behind him. The world goes hazy at the edges, but Yagarai can’t say he minds as he feels Marito’s hands slide into his hair, keeping him at arms length for a few seconds as he takes in the changed view. He lets out a sound of approval, then tugs Yagarai down for another kiss, slow and soft.  
  
It’s easy and familiar, the gentleness and the sincere sense of desire lurking just behind it as he lets Marito set the pace, stopping to think and simply giving in to the pure enjoyment of this moment regardless of their circumstances.   
  
It was better to not think about what it would mean for their respective teaching, medical and military careers if the nature of their relationship became common knowledge. Yagarai was prepared to burn these bridges when he got to them, but he isn’t sure about Marito’s stance on the matter. It’s not as if they ever talk about it. He’s not sure if they can.  
  
This time, it’s the Lieutenant who pulls back first, one hand sliding from his grip on Yagarai’s hair to lie warm and broad against the back of his neck. His expression is on that verge of tenderness that makes Yagarai’s chest feel tight each of the rare times he is treated to a glimpse of it.  
  
“That was nice,” Marito then murmurs, and Yagarai snorts, the tense moment dissolving into easy proximity once more as Marito grins back at him.  
  
“Thanks, I guess.”  
  
Yagarai shifts his weight to one hand and brushes his thumb against the thin, soft skin below Marito’s eyes, tracing the shadows above the defined ridge of bone beneath.  
  
“More nightmares?” he asks, even though they both know the answer to that question.  
  
He can see it in the Lieutenants look, now, his countenance softening behind his usual veneer of casual nonchalance and biting cynicism. When he does reply after some moments, it’s so quiet that Yagarai isn’t entirely sure he meant to say it out loud at all.  
  
“Make me forget.”  
  
Yagarai doesn’t need him to specify. Make me forget about the sickening stench of blood and ash, the reverberating echo of screams followed by the terrifying stretch of dead silence, the burning heat of the flames and the icy cold of dread. Make me forget about Tanegashima. Make me forget about John Humeray.  
  
He keeps smiling in the face of the impossible, even if he feels his throat constrict with empathic sadness.  
  
“That’s quite tall an order, Lieutenant.”  
  
“I’m a selfish man, shamelessly taking advantage of the misguided kindness of my junior, sensei.”   
  
His tone is blithely sarcastic again, but the hold of his fingers in Yagarai’s hair tightens for just a second, and he catches as Marito’s gaze flickers aside and breaks eye contact ever so briefly. This, too, is long familiar.  
  
“If anything,” he replies softly, leaning in to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth, “I’m the one taking advantage of you, Lieutenant, my trusting patient in a vulnerable state.”  
  
“Guess that makes the both of us despicable and unprofessional people, then.”  
  
There’s grim amusement in his voice, but Yagarai doesn’t argue the playing-out of their same old spiel, instead moving to slowly slide his free hand up beneath Marito's shirt where it was only haphazardly tucked into his trousers, taking in the warmth of the skin and the shiver of solid muscle just beneath. Marito’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t look away this time.  
  
“I can try,” Yagarai says quietly. “Even if it’s just for a moment.”  
  
Even if all it could be right now was superficial distraction at best.  
  
“You don’t have to do anything.”  
  
Yagarai tries to read between the apparent contradiction of the man’s words and those unspoken, merely conveyed through the way Marito’s hands haven’t strayed from their position, the minimal tilt of his hips as he presses up against his hand still splayed against the skin of his stomach, the flick of his tongue over his lips.  
  
“I want to,” he decides, swiftly changing position from standing leaning awkwardly over Marito to climbing on the couch himself, effectively straddling him, his knees framing the man’s hips.  
  
He leaves no room for more arguing, intent to bring his point across nonverbally for now. As per usual, the top two buttons of the Lieutenant’s shirt are unbuttoned, his tie lose, and while Yagarai can’t help thinking occasionally that it’s a crying shame he never gets to see the man in full proper parade uniform, it is a convenience now as he can simply lean in to leave a trail of kisses, starting from the edge of his jaw down the column of his throat.  
  
As always, the skin of his neck smells of aftershave and burnt gunpowder, a mixture that seems to have followed him from the battle fields to the training grounds.  
  
He can feel the soft moans reverberate against his lips as he lets his tongue sweep over a spot just above Marito’s collarbone, and notes with a rush of affection how the man’s fingers against his own neck have started threading through the hair at his nape gently, a soothing motion of kindness. He takes it as proof that Lieutenant relaxed enough that he can move on.   
  
He withdraws his hand from where he had been absentmindedly drawing meaningless patterns against the pane of Marito’s stomach, instead putting it to work on his belt and trousers. He casts a quick glance up at Marito’s face, just to make sure, and the way his eyes have darkened now, molten brass to tarnished copper, is as much as an affirmation as the way he lifts his hips slightly, helping him push down his clothing enough to give him easy access.  
  
Yagarai derails himself again by leaning back up to kiss him once more, too drawn in by the look of actual longing written over his face. He chases after the taste of tobacco and alcohol on Marito’s tongue, and thinks with a dark sense of satisfaction that this man truly had a knack for making him crave all the things a proper medical professional should never get to know, let alone desire.  
  
When he pushes back up, breath coming short and laboured, Yagarai finds Marito staring at him positively dazed, and he feels the sudden urge to push him further, truly make a mess of him to the point where he really might forget everything on his mind, even for just a second.  
  
Marito blinks in confusion as he abruptly sits up, only for his expression to shift to the closest to bashfulness it ever gets for someone like him as Yagarai shifts the position of his knees further down, following up with his full body until his hands come to rest on the dips of the other man’s hips.  
  
“You really don’t have to-”  
  
“Just try to enjoy this and relax, Lieutenant,” Yagarai tells him with gentle insistence as he shifts his weight around in order to find a more comfortable position before he gets started.  
  
“Doctor’s orders,” he then adds jokingly, after the fraction of a pause, and is answered by a startled laugh.  
  
“When did you get so cocky, med student?”  
  
Yagarai just smiles, but then shifts his focus away from enjoying the genuine amusement in Marito’s voice to the task he had set for himself.  
  
When he had first fantasized about this, back when he had been little more than a teenager who, with the unparalleled arrogance of youth, had thought graduating high school was already equivalent with being a true adult, he had imagined this to be rough, with a clear imbalance in power and command.   
  
It had been the thrill of falling for a near-stranger back then, a combat-experienced officer, a man almost ten years his senior and a patient of his uncle’s just to round up the list of reasons it had been a horrible idea to try and forge any kind of relationship with him as much as he did in the first place. And while he had been mostly satisfied with the friendship they had going by the time Marito was discharged, sometimes the vague ideas came back uninvited, anyway.  
  
Something about Marito’s low, rough voice and casual disregard for any orders by doctors and nurses alike left Yagarai’s mind flooded with half-formed images of the man’s fingers tugging sharply at his hair and encouragements slipping into the register of military commands.   
  
Now, he knows that reality is vastly different, but no less pleasurable. The hands in his hair are unfalteringly gentle, a warm weight against his scalp but never any pressure, the sounds spilling from Marito’s lips a melody of soft moans, rough only on the edge.   
  
What remains unchanged is the unpleasant bitter taste and the strain of his muscles locked in the unfamiliar position, but it’s a small price to pay for the tremors he can feel rippling through Marito’s entire body, the push of his hips against the hold he refuses to relinquish, the incoherence of his utterances.  
  
Let yourself fall, he thinks, half-delirious himself, and I will show you that I’m there to catch you, no matter what. Trust me, let me help you, leave some of your burdens for me to deal with.  
  
When Marito comes, it’s with a groan that almost sounds pained in how unrestrained it is.  
  
Still braced over his legs, Yagarai watches as Marito’s breathing evens out, evident the way the rise and fall of his chest turns from frantic to slow and regular, and he notes with pleasure that the tightness in the Lieutenant’s shoulders has subsided somewhat. In these moments, he always wonders if this is the closest he’ll ever get to seeing a genuine glimpse of the man Marito Kouichirou had been before the heavens fell. It’s both a thrilling and terrifying thought.  
  
“Come home with me,” is what he blurts out before he can think about whether the timing for the offer is right or not.   
  
Marito’s head snaps up, and he stares at him with something that looks like genuine confusion. Yagarai manages not to laugh when faced with this bewildering disconnect between them.  
  
At this point, at least, it seems Marito trusts him enough to believe that he’s not only indulging this attraction out of mere pity, which had taken long enough to get him to understand, but he still considers himself an unbearable burden when it comes to Yagarai keeping him company for more than an hour.   
  
We sure have this intimacy thing all backwards, Yagarai thinks. He’s comfortable enough with me to share his innermost secrets, to let me do these kinds of things to him in the backroom of our workplace, but not to let me stay overnight at his apartment.  
  
“You seem to sleep better when I’m there,” he explains with a slight shrug to show he wasn’t going to insist on the assessment in case Marito disagreed. It’s not as if he could force this process of trusting to go any faster. Or rather,  he could, in case he wanted to betray the last remnants of the ethics of his profession.  
  
“And you sleep the worse for it,” Marito cuts him off dismissively. “You have work tomorrow, so I’m not going to keep you up all night by waking up from nightmares screaming bloody murder every twenty minutes.”  
  
“I went through med school,” Yagarai counters with wry amusement. “I’m used to get by on less than four hours of sleep, you know.”  
  
Marito looks like he wants to keep arguing, but Yagarai shuts him up effectively by moving back up swiftly, until he once more has his hands framing o both sides of the Lieutenant’s head, looking down at him. Whatever he wanted to say has died on his tongue apparently as he stares up at him, that hint of rare vulnerability again barely showing through at the edges of his composure.  
  
“I didn’t mind then because I thought the thing I was sacrificing sleep for was worth it and because it was something I really wanted from the bottom of my heart.” Yagarai lets a moment pass, drinking in the way Marito’s focus is solely fixed on him. “And the same applies now, Lieutenant.”  
  
Marito’s eyes narrow, and for a split second Yagarai fears he overstayed his welcome, overstepped some of their indistinct, unspoken boundaries. The way that Marito tilts his head to the side slightly, a shadow of former utterly self-assured cockiness resurfacing, doesn’t so much put him at ease as it sends a shiver down his spine.  
  
“Well, well, well, aren’t you a silver-tongued beast, sensei.” The way his voice drips over the title should be illegal, Yagarai thinks. “Take me home, then, if you think you can deal with me.”


	2. seven secrets

“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you.”  
  
Yuki slams the old thermos down on the wobbly table with unnecessary force, causing some coffee to spill over the edge of her mug. She miscalculated the milk-coffee-ratio-surface-tension-limit as per usual. Inaho could probably give her the exact formula rundown of her mistake. Grabbing the handle of the second cup, content pitch black and utterly unappealing, she turns around with a frown, trying to stare down her conversation partner into an apology.  
  
Her effort is entirely wasted, as she has to realise, considering Marito isn’t looking in her direction at all. He’s sitting behind the command center of their observation booth, feet hooked under the edge of the dashboard and chair tipped back to balance on its hind legs, seemingly lost in thought.   
  
Although he looks as usual as if everything regarding his appearance had come as an afterthought, shirt collar rumbled and hair messy and overgrown, for the early hour of the day he is unusually awake, and, going by Yuki’s keen sense of smell, sober.   
  
She grits her teeth as she crosses over to him with a few measured strides.   
  
The urge to kick against the legs of his chair just to see if his reaction speed still truly is as top-notch he says it is, and also to see him lose all his smug nonchalant composure for a change, flares for a second, but passes just a quickly. No matter how laissez-fair he might appear, he was still her superior officer, after all.   
  
So instead, she simply extends the cup of coffee towards him with a huff. He turns to look at her at that, seeming almost startled as if he had only just noticed her presence.  
  
“You wound me, Kaizuka,” he then says quite unexpectedly as he carefully takes the mug from her hands, tone as often too cynical in melody to sound anything close to genuine. “I’m always listening when my favourite subordinate talks to me.”  
  
He gives her a lopsided grin and toasts to her.  
  
“Oh really,” she drawls, catching herself as she crosses her arms in front of her chest. She drops them to her side again. No use in looking like a pouting kid, not when Marito hardly ever gives her the impression he was taking her seriously in the first place.   
  
“Hmhm.” He blows against the steam rising from the coffee, then takes a long, deliberate sip, in order to let her wait or try skimming through his vague memory to come up with a reply, she isn’t sure which. Then: “You were talking about your little brother starting school here last week. Class 1-B.”  
  
Apparently he wasn’t as inattentive to her casual conversation then as she had assumed from his lack of responsiveness. Yuki coughs against the rising embarrassment and turns to lean against the dashboard herself, facing him as he watches her with an expression of distant amusement. At least he wasn’t mean-spirited enough to gloat about her misjudgement.  
  
“My apologies for the libel, Lieutenant.”   
  
He shrugs light-heartedly, tipping his chair slightly further back.   
  
“Hardly the worst ever directed at me, Kaizuka. Don’t worry.”  
  
There’s a beat of silence as she can’t help but think of all the things her fellow cadets had whispered to her in hushed tones once they had received notifications of their post-graduation stations. How could they ever have assigned a young female recruit to Marito Kouichirou, they had wondered. The man was a paranoid compulsory liar, a coward who deserted his unit, an irresponsible and incompetent alcoholic, a man way too casual with regards to personal space -all around a disgrace of a soldier.  
  
“In any case,” she brushes the memories aside, focussing on the man in front of her now. He might be some of these things, but she also knows him to be the most diligent with the safety of his students during live-fire practices, no matter how much he had had to drink. “Nao-kun told me about the rumours that spread among the first years during the orientation week. It’s funny, considering I attended the same school not that long ago, but it seems some of the seven school mysteries now are completely different.”  
  
“Kids still have these going in this day and age?” Marito raises his eyebrows at her. “And here I thought that surely died out with the smartphone generation.”  
  
“Nah, they’re still at it. Let’s see, there’s the skeleton in the biology prep room that sometimes moves out of it’s own accord-”  
  
“A classic.”  
  
“Isn’t it? There’s also the secret lunch menu, an alleged passageway between the student council office and the cafeteria, the fact that the seventh step of the west stairway is cursed in some form and that if you manage to sit in the window seat in the back of classroom 3-A, you are almost guaranteed to pass your exams. All those I remember from attending the school as well. But the last two were new to me - number six says that if you want to confess to someone outside, you may not stand close to the east wall windows, or else it’s going to go wrong.”  
  
“That sounds oddly specific and like it involved falling objects at some point,” Marito chimes in, smiling as he lifts his cup back to his lips, halting just to ask: “And number seven?”  
  
“That one definitely wasn’t around during my time. It says that sometimes in the afternoon, if you walk past the corridor connecting to the barracks where the infirmary is, you can hear the moaning of a patient in pain, even though the complex is deserted.”  
  
Marito chokes on his coffee, his instant coughing tipping the delicate balance of the chair over, and for the blink of a moment Yuki watches with a mixture of amazement and horror as the unstable equilibrium threatens to topple backwards and send her boss on collision course with the concrete floor.   
  
Then, his alleged quick reflexes do seem to kick in, and he jerks forward, bringing the chair down properly again with him as he leans forward and tries to regain his breath. It’s hard to tell in the relatively dim light of the booth and with the length of his hair, but Yuki thinks his neck looks suspiciously red.  
  
“Are you okay, Lieutenant?” she asks once she overcomes her state of frozen shock, itching but reluctant to give in to her natural inclination to give him a hearty pat on the back.   
  
“Fine,” she gets back in turn, in a very raspy voice. He gets to his feet in a sudden motion, putting the half-emptied cup down on the dash and making for the door fast without really looking at her. “Kids these days surely have quite an overactive imagination. Anyway, gotta go and get the Sleipnir units combat ready, you handle the group assignment today, Kaizuka.”  
  
And with that, he has already slipped away, leaving Yuki to blink in bewilderment at his unusual burst of work enthusiasm.  
  
“I’m pretty sure all of these so called mysteries have very easy and practical explanations,” Inaho had said over dinner yesterday. “I surely can think of some, at least. Some don’t require much of an imagination.”  
  
She can’t help wondering why the last one in particular seems to have spooked her superior. As far as she knows, he has little to do with the school faculties outside the combat practice areas, and nothing at all with the medical facilities. Well, he is friends with the doctor, Yuki knows as much from occasionally seeing them together during lunch breaks and she thinks she remembers Marito mentioning going out for drinks with him every so often, too.   
  
Something like the vague shadow of understanding begins to dawn on her as she watches the door fall shut, and she feels the heat of embarrassment crawl up its way to her neck.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
  



End file.
